Today marks the release of Atari and Digital Eclipse’s newest anthology, Mortal Kombat Legacy Kollection. The collection features various ports of Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat II, Mortal Kombat 3, Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, including a never-before-released home version of WAVEnet Ultimate Mortal Kombat, which was an exclusive internet-connected cabinet released in select locations.
The full package includes arcade, SNES, Genesis, Game Boy, Game Gear, 32x, and PlayStation ports of the various games, an extensive collection of documentaries for fans to check out, and bonus extras and unlockables. The documentaries are well worth your time and provide a ton of context and footage of the game’s creation and the processes behind it. The game is out now digitally on the Switch 2, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S.
I first began playing Mortal Kombat at arcades with my childhood best friend, Nathan Burnham. He was fairly good at Mortal Kombat and would routinely beat the arcade when given a full run. It was always interesting to watch older folks try to take him on, as Nathan just fully understood timing and gaming mechanics. He was also disturbingly good at Killer Instinct, but he enjoyed MK more.
This Kollection brings back a ton of memories. I can recall spending hours playing the game on Christmas Day after getting it for Christmas. I remember only being allowed to play the SNES version of Mortal Kombat because it didn’t have blood and gore. These are fundamental memories permanently implanted within my brain, and this Kollection brought them flooding back. Kudos to Digital Eclipse and Atari for producing an anthology so rich in history and packed with memories I had long since forgotten.
Several quality-of-life features help bring the Mortal Kombat Legacy Kollection into the modern age. You can instantly unlock cheats, fatalities, and hidden characters. You no longer have to mess around with inputting and remembering various codes, though I still remember all of mine by heart. That’s right, I still remember how to unlock Scott’s Stuff, Cool Stuff, Cooler Stuff, and the Sound Test in MK3 some twenty-odd years later. They have special move trainers and fatality trainers so that you can practice for your big matches in private. Mortal Kombat 4 allows you to upscale the graphics four times.
In all, there’s not much I could say about Mortal Kombat that you haven’t heard before. What I can say is that this anthology is perfect for folks like me, who have fond memories of spending long days in arcades with their friends and long nights in front of their TV trying to defeat Shang Tsung, Shao Kahn, and the Outworld minions. If you enjoyed even just one of these games on a visceral level like I did, then you know the Mortal Kombat Legacy Kollection is an absolute must-buy.
